


Reliving That Unlived

by sneakronicity



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Community: cottoncandy_bingo, Drabble, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-17
Updated: 2012-12-17
Packaged: 2017-11-21 07:57:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/595336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sneakronicity/pseuds/sneakronicity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint and Natasha both had pretty poor childhoods, but they make up for that when they can.  Together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reliving That Unlived

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the cottoncandy_bingo prompt "Child". Marvel owns all except my headcanon. I fail at titles. I also fail at summaries, and apparently author's notes, but hopefully not at fics. :D

Neither of them had had much of a childhood.  Comparatively Natasha’s had been much worse; taken at a young age and torn apart, unmade, turned into a monster, a killer, a machine.  She hadn’t been afforded the luxuries of friendship, pitted against the other girls as if their lives depended on it.  
  
Some days they did.  
  
She had killed her first man at the age of eight, been married at sixteen, and all the time between had been spent training to be faster, deadlier, unbeatable.  She seduced men without flinching, tortured them without batting an eye.  The Black Widow always got what she wanted... no, she always got what she was told to want, what she was paid to get.  
  
Natasha’s childhood had definitely been worse, but that didn’t mean Clint’s was any less noteworthy, or any less painful.  His father had been an abusive alcoholic, his mother disconnected, and the orphanage he had lived in after their death had been a cold and dreary place.  The circus had been better, what child didn’t dream of living in a circus?  But his brother, his mentors, they had all betrayed him.  Sometimes in the cold his legs still ached from the breaks they’d suffered all those year ago.    
  
Neither of them had had much of a childhood but together, in their twenties and thirties, they began to rectify that.    
  
They learned card games; not the “grown-up” ones like poker or 45s, but games like Go Fish and War.  The latter was their favourite, though they often got a bit carried away and more violent than most people should.  Still, to them, it was all in good fun.  
  
Their second Christmas together Clint took Natasha ice skating.  They were both terrible and ended up with more bruises from hitting the ice than their last three sparring sessions put together, but their sides hurt more from laughing than anything.  It was a good kind of pain.  
  
In the fifth year of their partnership they went to Disney Land on vacation.  They went on every ride they could, bought mouse ears to wear, and got their pictures taken with every costumed employee they came across.  Natasha keeps a copy of the one of Clint and Goofy under her mattress to this day.  
  
On Natasha’s 25th birthday Clint had hung streamers in his room and gotten her a cake with lots of frosting and ice cream on the side.  He had even worn a paper party hat, but she had refused to go that far.  She did enjoy the noisemaker, though; mostly because he winced every single time she blew it to create the annoying, high pitched noise.  He never gave her another one of those.  
  
Every year they ‘revisited’ at least one major thing they’d missed out on: a trip to the zoo, Christmas caroling.  Clint had even won Natasha a teddy bear at Coney Island, and when he returned with cotton candy for them both she had one twice the size waiting for him.  
  
Neither of them had had much of a childhood, they had both been forced to grow up too quickly; but in their adulthood, and only together, did they learn to to be children.


End file.
